The Hidden Pitfalls of Liquid Cooling

The Hidden Pitfalls of Liquid Cooling

This is going to be an unusual blog post, because I'm going to try and talk you out of one of our most impressive (and expensive) products. This isn't the sort of thing you'd normally see on a commercial website, but I guess we're not your normal commercial blog either. Today I'm going to try and convince you that you don't need a fully liquid cooled system.

I've been with Puget Systems for about 10 years, and I've seen pretty much every kind of system cooling under the sun. When I refer to a “fully liquid cooled system”, I mean a system with a dedicated radiator and pump which cool multiple points within the system (usually CPU and video cards, and sometimes the chipset or other parts too).

When I consider the various reasons that someone is usually interested in a liquid cooled system, they generally boil down to two categories:

Cooling Performance

This includes people looking to keep their system extra cool, people who want to overclock, and people who are packing so much hardware into the computer that you need liquid cooling to reach it all.

It looks really flippin' cool

It's the hot rod of PC building - it looks really cool and all your friends will be jealous. It might not be very practical, but that's not the point. Pompadours aren't very practical, but that never stopped Elvis, did it?

The first, and the most important, is just the additional risk of failure in the system. A liquid cooled computer is far more complex than your standard air-cooled system. You still have all the traditional points of failure, such as a video card failing, or a stick of memory going bad, but you now add in a dozen or so additional failure points in hoses, barbs, radiators, waterblocks, pumps, and everything else. Some people think that liquid cooling (and lower temperatures) will improve the stability of a system, but our numbers suggest otherwise. Our most stable systems use the tried-and-true K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) philosophy.

Another major drawback is the complexity of the repair work if something goes wrong. In an air-cooled system if your video card should happen to die (and trust me, these things can happen), the fix is simply swapping in a new one and maybe reinstalling drivers. In a liquid cooled system, you have all the hassles of replacing a card that's part of the liquid cooling loop. This often means draining the whole system, or using some hose clamps, and a host of other concerns that most people wouldn't want to deal with. In fact, it's hard to find a local computer shop with a lot of hands-on experience with liquid cooling. In these cases, a little problem can become a major problem in a hurry.

There's other pitfalls too. Liquid cooled systems require maintenance, you may have to periodically top-off the fluid levels. They're extremely heavy, and much more difficult to ship safely. (Tip: If you ever need to ship a liquid cooled system for any reason, it's often a good idea to drain the fluid first and then refill it on the other end of the trip).

It's also worth noting that a liquid cooled system is a fair bit louder than most of our systems. That might seem counter-intuitive, but think about it this way: A well designed system has smart paths for airflow, with several fans and baffles guiding the cool air over hot components. In a liquid cooled system, you take all that heat and funnel it through a single radiator, with only 2 or 3 fans to cool the whole thing, so these radiator fans have to work a lot faster to move off all that heat. Add in the noise of the pump, cavitation noise and the turbulent flow of water through the various parts, and it's simply louder than a system we could build with traditional cooling methods.

If you're trying to figure out whether or not you need the cooling performance of a liquid cooled system, I'd start with these two questions:

Are you looking for a system with multiple bulky video cards that will only fit if you replace their stock cooling fan with a liquid cooled water block?

Are you planning on overclocking this system yourself, beyond what the a system builder (like us!) is willing to do?

If you answered no to both of those questions, then you probably don't need liquid cooling.

Everyone assumes that liquid cooling has better performance than air cooling. Why else would it be so expensive, right? It's true that liquid cooled setups are very efficient. However, the important point is that the extra cooling potential is often wasted.

I don't need a car that can go 200mph if I only drive it on roads with a 60mph speed limit, I don't need a 24oz coffee cup if I've only got a double shot of espresso, and I definitely don't need a ton of extra cooling potential if a normal set of cooling fans will keep everything at safe levels.

With a few exceptions, modern hardware has gotten more efficient and less hot in recent years. Even if you're building an ultra-high end rig with the latest processors, a zillion gigs of RAM and multiple video cards, we can cool all that sufficiently without needing liquid cooling. Furthermore, the safeguards on modern hardware overheating have all improved in recent years, so even if it somehow overheated your system is probably just going to turn itself off and not damage anything.

I've pulled data on two different builds of ours from the same time period last summer. They're nearly identical, using extremely high end hardware.

The red lines are the CPU core temperatures, while the green line is the video card. What we see here is that both systems are showing very stable temperatures. The liquid cooled system's video card stays much cooler, but the processors are running a little hotter. This is because all that heat from the video card is included in the same cooling loop at the processors. The non-liquid cooled system has lower CPU temperatures, and while the video card is hotter it's well within an acceptable threshold.

This data supports my argument that even with modern, high-end, overclocked hardware, liquid cooling is not necessary to sufficiently cool a well-designed system.

No doubt, a fully liquid cooled system can be pretty darn sexy. Ultimately, if that's why you end up buying a liquid cooled system, that's just fine. But you should, at some point, stop and ask yourself whether or not the additional cost, higher failure rate, and everything else, is worth it.

I'll give you a personal example. I really want to buy myself a early-60's Lincoln Continental convertible. Leather interior, check. Suicide doors, check. Massive repair and maintenance costs? Check. Let's be honest though - I live in rainy Seattle, and there's no way I'm going to buy a soft-top convertible when I'd only get to use it twice a year. Still, that doesn't stop me from window-shopping from time to time.

This would be me.

I think that cars actually make a pretty good analogy for computers. They're both costly semi-necessities which cover the spectrum from inexpensive-and-practical to ridiculous-and-expensive.

Here's something to consider though: any time you see a list of average repair and maintenance costs in the car industry, you'll generally find that the 10 least expensive cars to own have names like Honda, Hyundai, Kia and Mazda. The 10 most expensive cards to own have names like Jaguar, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Those luxury brand cars are totally awesome, and obviously people love them, but those owners need to be prepared for an extra level of complication and expense if something goes wrong. That same lesson holds true for someone who decides to spend a lot on a great looking liquid cooled system purely for aesthetics and bragging rights.

Okay, I'm done telling you what not to buy. I wanted to wrap this thing up by recommending a compelling alternative instead. I'm talking about “closed loop liquid cooling” (which I'll henceforth shorten to CLLC). This is a self-contained liquid cooling device designed to cool only your CPU. Here's an example:

Unlike a fully-liquid cooled solution, I wholly recommend one of these devices. Let's look at some of the problems a traditional liquid cooling setup has, and compare them to a CLLC unit:

Full Liquid Cooling

Closed Loop System

Approx price: +$1000

Approx price: +$50

Very hard to service

Simple to service or replace

Lots of points of failure

Factory-sealed, never seen one leak.

Adds weight and shipping complications

No heavier than most high end CPU coolers

Requires maintenance

No maintenance needed

Comparably noisy

A single, quiet (and replaceable!) fan.

To me, that's a pretty strong argument. Unless you're buying a fully liquid cooled setup because you desperately want that hot-rod, these closed-loop systems are the way to go. You'll save yourself a chunk of change on the hardware, a little more on shipping costs, and maybe you'll avoid a major headache down the road.

It would be very nice, indeed, if those closed-loop liquid coolers (or "All-In-One" (AIO) as I've also seen them called) could be used to cool a graphics card; one AOI for the CPU, one AIO for the GPU, and an otherwise complete Air-cooling solution would probably rock on toast. Especially since the flaw you cite for the full-system liquid cooling setup, the fact that the GPU's heat is in the same loop as the CPU, would no longer apply.

You'd just need a case that had places to put two radiators, but still have places for normal air-cooling exhaust(s) and intake(s).

Maybe I don't understand, but why not simply put the separate components on individual liquid cooling lines to separate radiators? Do the components not come small enough or something?

Posted on 2013-03-12 12:03:39

therealscruffy

Space is a big issue with liquid cooling, and with most modern cases there's just enough room to create one loop that covers everything (gpu, cpu, northbridge etc.). Adding a second pump for a separate loop isn't quite as easy as it seems. You have to leave enough room for your tubing to bend without kinking, and you want to keep things from becoming too tangled. It can be done and I'm sure there are examples out there if you look around, but it's not an ideal solution.

Yeah, the cost is way over the top, IMO. If it were 10% performance for 15% cost, even 20% cost, then I might consider the improved heat-handling to be worth the extra money on a card that's already going to be costing $400 to $1,000.

But if the markup is going to be and stay 50%? Feh. I'd rather wait for the AIO cooling kit manufacturors to come out with something - and then pay Puget to install it for me, hah!

Heat is a big concern of mine as I am in the Tropics (temp equivalent of Arizona? Maybe Nevada?) currently with a PC built by Puget Systems (yaaayy!!). I found when I tried the latest Valley benchmark that my graphics card temperature hit about 85 degrees max (7970 Radeon) after just 5 minutes of running and flying through the trees. This got me concerned, and I manually increased the fan speed on the card. It was incredibly loud, but the heat came down dramatically.

That temperature graph for the video card looks fantastic to me. How is the liquid cooling able to produce such a remarkable drop in temperature. It is almost 100% cooler. I would not have expected the difference to be so great.

Posted on 2013-03-18 14:16:08

Pc water cooling system

Thanks for sharing with us.I am really thankful to you for providing the valuable information about Pc water cooling system. I am absolutely valuate your effort.

Posted on 2014-06-13 12:57:41

Adolfo

Good article, exactly the information I needed. Thank you.

Posted on 2014-07-21 06:50:43

Kougar

Interesting read! I agree with many of your points, but as a DIY watercooler I still use watercooling because it is quieter. A low noise pump and three high quality fans guarantee the system remains inaudible a few feet away, and it specifically does away with the GPU blower noise. It makes no sense to consider that a CPU gets a larger HSF cooler and a GPU a small heatsink and ~80mm fan when the GPU dissipates ~250W and the CPU only ~100W.

I must completely disagree with CLLC systems as you term them. They are proven to fail inside 3 years and not all allow adding more coolant which is always eventually required regardless of what the CLLC claims. The pumps in particular suffer a high mortality rate even within the first year and customers rarely monitor CPU temps or notice until the system begins to crash or restart. This is opposed to a MCP655 pump I've been running 24/7 since 2007, not only does it still work great but the bearing has yet to make any noise. I've seen ceiling fan bearings wear out faster!

Posted on 2014-08-27 15:25:31

Your Numbers Suggest Otherwise

According to your numbers, liquid cooling is very worthwhile. You're only looking at the CPU temps, but the 30-40C temp drop of the video card is why gamers get full liquid setups. Full setups are usually done by people with 2+ video cards, which is what the GTX 690 is. Your CPU temperatures are also mysteriously high. I really don't understand how it got so hot if your setup was done correctly. Every CPU cooling result I have seen is at least 15C cooler, even at peak load.

The last point which is unbelievably terrible is your liquid product comparison. You're comparing a full setup to a single CPU cooler. What? WHAT??? Well of COURSE your pro/con list is accurate! You're comparing 4+ fans to 1 (and there are very quiet models)!!! And if you're going to cry about pumps, they're pretty quiet. If they weren't, gamers wouldn't list "quiet" as a pro. And then $1000 to $50! You can get a proper full setup for $300-$400. What did you buy to reach that number? The most expensive everything? This is so unbelievable stupid and thrown together so half-assed that if it were posted somewhere else I would be tempted to think it was a troll article.

Oh and yes, you do have to check closed loop systems because they DO fail occasionally. If correctly done full systems had a significant failure rate, then people pumping a lot of money into their rigs wouldn't buy them.

Do more research into your topics and use some critical thinking when analyzing your numbers and products. I have a feeling that I'm going to be flabbergasted all day.

Posted on 2014-09-15 16:46:05

WebWalker

Why do I water-cool? Fan-based systems are DUST MAGNETS and I live in a dusty world.Why do I water-cool? Fan-based systems can get quite loud in quite warm environments, and it gets quite warm.Water-cooled systems weigh more? Coolant? A pint is a pound, the world around. That's 2 pounds of coolant in a 1 quart system. Cooling blocks? There's another 2 pounds. Radiator? Pump? Another 2-3 pounds. Total? 10 pounds. I don't move my machine enough to care about this.Points of failure? Plumbing lasts years if not decades, and would last twice as long with controlled liquids suppressing chemical erosion. From my extended family's experience, the most common points of failure are mice, mic-headphone-sets, fans and power supplies in that order (excluding first "things exposed to toddlers or teenagers").I'll stick to water cooling, thanks.

Liquid-cooled systems still have fans (usually, at least - I have seen maybe two systems ever that were liquid-cooled and fanless) so they still pull in dust. The best solution there - whether liquid-cooling or air - is to use a case with good filtration over the intake fans :)

Posted on 2014-09-23 18:56:54

StephenP85

A lot of liquid cooled systems have more fans than normal air-cooled rigs.

I read this article every time I spend hours just to upgrade two video cards. It could be a simpler task with the use of quick disconnects, but every time that thought occurs to me, I've already spent a fortune on video card upgrades and am in the middle of draining the loop again.

I'm convinced that I enjoy it.

Posted on 2014-10-27 04:06:39

Meh

I am using a closed sealed liquid cooler, I find it a better solution than air cooling. In fact I have used all kinds of weird coolers even the highly recommended ones. They are just not on par with liquid cooling especially if you plan to oc. Liquid coolers (not water coolers) unlike popular beliefs are cheaper than some of the after market air coolers, expect to pay between $60 - $80 for liquid coolers. Good air cooling actually climbs in price tag in comparison.

What not to expect:

Liquid cooling is not a refrigerator, might as well live in the North Pole for best results.

Liquid coolers don't leak like water coolers can.

Liquid coolers have a noise reduced fan attached to a radiator.

Liquid coolers use copper face plate for contact and seal the surface between your processor and cooler. Do not tighten it too much otherwise it can brake.

Liquid coolers last longer than air coolers but require a clean environment for breathing. Expect to vacuum out the dust collection otherwise.

Overall these coolers are basically a middle ground between air and water cooling and thus have strengths and weaknesses.

Yeah, closed-loop liquid-cooling has a lot of advantages compared to 'full' liquid-cooling. I think Richard (the author) even mentioned that toward the end of the article. We use closed-loop cooling on many systems, like our Deluge gaming computer (to enable overclocking) and our Genesis workstations (to handle the high heat of many-core Xeon processors).

Posted on 2014-12-05 19:12:56

Dropandgiveme20

WOW looks like water cooling got drastically cheaper in 2 years, most coolers i have seen are in the 50-120 dollar range

Posted on 2015-01-26 00:43:52

beth bishop

I know its an old post but it has to said that half of what you said is utter nonsense, for starters most modern pumps are virtually noise free and in regards to the fans having to work that much extra that also incorrect, the idea of a radiator is it spreads the heat within all the blades which then takes less air being blown to cool it down.